1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus for estimating of deviation from lane and method estimating of a deviation from a lane and to a warning apparatus and method for issuing a warning to a driver when it is determined that there is a possibility of a deviation and, more particularly, to estimating and warning apparatus of deviation from lane and methods for estimating a deviation from a lane and for issuing a warning, in order to perform lane deviation prevention support for preventing deviation of a running vehicle from the lane.
2. Background Art
There are vehicles with a lane deviation preventing function of preventing from deviating a vehicle running on a lane of a road from the lane. An example of the conventional apparatus with such a function is a driving state evaluating apparatus, for example, disclosed in JP A 7-105498 (hereinafter referred to as Document 1). This driving state evaluating apparatus is configured to predict a deviation state on the basis of a distance to an intersection between an predicted course of a host vehicle and a boundary of a driving lane, and an angle between the predicted course and the boundaries of the driving lane (yaw angle). When this deviation evaluation results in evaluating that the vehicle will deviate from the lane, the apparatus issues a warning and automatically performs a correction for steering.